As a rough guide, Porter says, there’s a pretty decent correlation between the loonie and oil in recent years that has found that for every $ 10 decline or gain in oil’s price, the loonie goes up or down by aboutfour cents.

So as soon as we know where oil’s going, we’ll have a clearer sense of where the loonie’s headed. But if oilpatch legend Jim Gray is right and oil could be going as low as $ 30, as he told the CBC’s Peter Armstrong in a fantastic interview this week, the answer may not be pretty, as that would work out to a loonie worth less than 70 cents US.

Although was quick to make it clear the bank wasn’t considering this drastic option any time soon, one new policy the bank said it would theoretically consider is to let its benchmark interestrate turn negative.

Effectively, that means commercial banks would be charged a nominal fee when they storemoney in the central bank — a strong disincentive to do so, and an inducement to put that money to work literally anywhere else.

It’s a bold move, but not entirely unprecedented: Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and even the ECB have all used negative interest rates in recent years in attempts to stimulate their economies.

And again, the bank is nowhere close to using its new tool. “I certainly hope we won’t ever have to use these tools,” Poloz said. “However, in an uncertainworld, a central bank has to be prepared for all eventualities.”

Predatory lending crackdown

Another one of the biggest stories of the week was a move in Ontario to better regulate payday lenders and other, alternative financial services.

David Orazietti, Ontario’s Minister of Government and Consumer Services, unveiled new guidelines on Thursday aimed at helping consumers and, as he put it “protecting Ontarians from a cycle of debt.”

While it sounds great in theory, the proposed legislation was short on details. Orazietti says the new legislation would cap the cost of cheque-cashing services, crack down on unfair debt collection, and implement a waiting period between loans for payday lenders, all of which sounds promising.

But it didn’t touch on one of the fastest growing and most expensive types of loans — instalment loans. There are calls for caps on the ultra high-interest rates. The government says it isn’t ruling it out.

But that, too, is still at least a year or more away from any concrete action.

Other stuff

Those were just a few of our best stories this week. Be sure to follow us on Twitter to always stay up to date, and check our our home page for more here.

In the meantime, here’s a day-by-day list of our most-read stories this week.